Rated G, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, with Audrey Tautou (Amelie Poulain), Mathieu Kassovitz (Nino Quincammpoix), Rufus (Amelie's father), Yolande Moreau (Madeleine Wallace), running time: 122 minutes. In French, with Chinese subtitles.
Amelie Poulain is a waitress in a Montmarte cafe who lives a quiet life in a building occupied by some unusual characters; a weepy conciege, a painter with fragile bones who each year repaints a celebrated Renoir, and a dyspeptic grocer. When one day she finds a box of childhood memories stashed in her apartment decades earlier, she vows to return the contents to its estranged owner. This simple act of kindness alters the course of her life as she dedicates herself to becoming a doer of increasingly complex good deeds for the woebegone -- along the way, of course, discovering love. Jeunet, who's never made an upbeat film in his life, set out to do just that here. Given the film's popularity in France, he seems to have been successful. Fifty million French people can't be wrong. Or so the saying goes.
Wooden houses wedged between concrete, crumbling brick facades with roofs gaping to the sky, and tiled art deco buildings down narrow alleyways: Taichung Central District’s (中區) aging architecture reveals both the allure and reality of the old downtown. From Indigenous settlement to capital under Qing Dynasty rule through to Japanese colonization, Taichung’s Central District holds a long and layered history. The bygone beauty of its streets once earned it the nickname “Little Kyoto.” Since the late eighties, however, the shifting of economic and government centers westward signaled a gradual decline in the area’s evolving fortunes. With the regeneration of the once
Even by the standards of Ukraine’s International Legion, which comprises volunteers from over 55 countries, Han has an unusual backstory. Born in Taichung, he grew up in Costa Rica — then one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — where a relative worked for the embassy. After attending an American international high school in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital, Han — who prefers to use only his given name for OPSEC (operations security) reasons — moved to the US in his teens. He attended Penn State University before returning to Taiwan to work in the semiconductor industry in Kaohsiung, where he
On May 2, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), at a meeting in support of Taipei city councilors at party headquarters, compared President William Lai (賴清德) to Hitler. Chu claimed that unlike any other democracy worldwide in history, no other leader was rooting out opposing parties like Lai and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). That his statements are wildly inaccurate was not the point. It was a rallying cry, not a history lesson. This was intentional to provoke the international diplomatic community into a response, which was promptly provided. Both the German and Israeli offices issued statements on Facebook
Perched on Thailand’s border with Myanmar, Arunothai is a dusty crossroads town, a nowheresville that could be the setting of some Southeast Asian spaghetti Western. Its main street is the final, dead-end section of the two-lane highway from Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second largest city 120kms south, and the heart of the kingdom’s mountainous north. At the town boundary, a Chinese-style arch capped with dragons also bears Thai script declaring fealty to Bangkok’s royal family: “Long live the King!” Further on, Chinese lanterns line the main street, and on the hillsides, courtyard homes sit among warrens of narrow, winding alleyways and
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